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Increasing Engagement in a Cyber-Awareness Training Game

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Augmented Cognition. Human Cognition and Behavior (HCII 2020)

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Abstract

Today’s workforce is generally uneducated in cybersecurity, largely complacent, and fails to embrace the reality that ‘a risk to one is a risk to all’. A cyber-aware mindset must be instilled in improved training across the workforce. We are developing a training game designed to improve cyber awareness with the goal of inculcating “cyber mindset” to reduce vulnerabilities to and increase vigilance toward cyber threats. The game stresses critical thinking, intellectual engagement, and countering cognitive biases. We introduce the design and implementation of the training game. Creating effective cyber awareness training is often challenging due to resistance and disinterest from target populations. We outline the current implementation of the training game and introduce additional features or “mechanics” we have developed and also continue to investigate to attempt to improve the game’s effectiveness in developing a cyber mindset.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research project N68335-18-C-0724 Cyber-RAMPART. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Department of Defense or Office of Naval Research. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Government purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation hereon. We thank colleagues and collaborators who have provided insights and operational perspectives in the development of the Cyber-RAMPART including Kelly Neville, Behrooz Mostafavi, Alex Nickels, Larry Flint, Julie Marble, Alice Jackson and Justin Bonny.

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Wray, R., Massey, L., Medina, J., Bolton, A. (2020). Increasing Engagement in a Cyber-Awareness Training Game. In: Schmorrow, D., Fidopiastis, C. (eds) Augmented Cognition. Human Cognition and Behavior. HCII 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12197. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50439-7_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50439-7_10

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